Not a Day Goes By
by HPpercygirl
Summary: ALLEGIANT SPOILERS. Tobias deals with his grief a year after Tris' death.


I sit at my desk in the city's government building, hearing but not hearing the buzz around me. I've been numb all day. People see me, see the look in my eyes, and look past me again.

This doesn't happen often... Not anymore. It used to, all the time. A year ago, when my life shattered into pieces, I constantly went blank. I eventually learned to suppress the urge to be numb. Now it only happens at night. It's what keeps me from sleeping, it's what keeps the dark circles under my eyes and the irritability clinging to my personality like a dead skin.

Today I can't hide it. I can't push it back. I don't know why I'm here, pretending to function. Everyone can see that I'm not. That I'm hardly breathing. I wonder how many of them know why.

It's been a year since Tris died. I wish the day was nothing special. It's not, not really. It's just the three hundredth and sixty-fifth day without her, no different than the three hundredth and sixty-fourth, or the three hundredth and sixty-third. Or any day before that. They are each just another day without Tris here. Another day for me to miss her eyes, her kiss, her stupid stubborn streak, and her love. It's just another day.

But it's a day that I can't ignore. I realize this and stand from my desk. I leave the room, leave the building without making eye contact with another person. My hands are in my pockets and my head's down as if I can hide from the world as long as I don't look at it or feel it. But it's not the world I'm hiding from, anyway. It's my own body and the way it threatens to crumble out from under me.

I feel like if I keep walking, that won't happen. That as long as I'm moving my skin with hold my bones and keep me in one piece. So I walk. I don't have a destination in mind. I learned early on that Tris wasn't one place. That I didn't need to go anywhere special to feel closer to her. I stay away from the morgue, where her ashes are. I stay clear of the old Dauntless compound, the old Abnegation streets. Tris stays with me, in the only way she can now. In my thoughts, in my dreams when I can sleep, in my breaths. She never leaves.

Sometimes, in desperate moments, I wish she would. Sometimes, during those nights when I can't sleep, when I'm lying in bed and I start to imagine that I feel her warmth beside me, I scream for her to leave me alone. To give me one moment of piece. Then I cry. I cry, and I slam my fist against the wall, and I plead for her to come back.

She never does.

My feet stop and I look up to see where they've carried me. I've traveled further than I would have expected. Looming above me is the Ferris Wheel that Tris and I climbed that night we played Capture the Flag. Staring up at the broken frame of the ride I can only shake my head. It's no surprise, but Tris isn't here either. Still, some delusional part of my brain tells me to keep going. To climb. Maybe she'll be here. Maybe she'll be sitting on the platform, waiting for me, and she'll laugh when she sees the terror in my eyes and she'll kiss me and tell me to be brave.

I climb.

I keep my eyes up toward the afternoon winter sky. If I don't look down, I can pretend that I'm not getting any higher. My hands get cold quickly and go numb, but I don't stop. I keep pulling myself higher. Memories invade my senses as I climb. I hear Tris laughing, I see her smiling at me, I feel her lips kiss me. I feel her body on mine that night we spent in the bureau hotel room.

I reach the platform and pull myself onto it and lean back against a metal support. When I look down I feel dizzy and sick, like I might throw up. But I haven't eaten anything, so the feeling passes. I stare down at the ground, holding the platform so tightly that my red hands turn white.

I don't know why I did this. Tris isn't here. She's not going to smile at me ever again. Or tell me to be brave. Or tell me that she loves me.

I don't cry. I just hold the platform and stare at the ground as my fear of heights crashes over me again and again. I feel my heartbeat quicken and my empty stomach churns uncomfortably. But I like the feeling. I like being forced to feel something besides the aching and the absence of something in my chest.

I tip my face up toward the sky and close my eyes. Snow is falling now. It lands on my numb skin and melts.

"I love you, Tris." I whisper the words without meaning to. I wonder if she can hear them.

I climb down the Ferris Wheel, having a harder time than I did going up because of my cold hands. Once my feet are on solid ground again I shove my hands back into my pockets.

I walk away from the Ferris Wheel with no plans to ever go back. I return to my apartment in Chicago and I stay there for the rest of the day. I don't sleep that night. I return to work the next day. I engage in the conversations, the people. The smiles. I live my life while Tris is no longer living hers.

Three hundred and sixty-six days. I wonder if it will ever get easier.


End file.
